5 Things every Microsoft Teams Meeting Newbie Should Know

Reading Time: 7 minutes

[UPDATE March 2020] All screen prints and instructions have been updated and validated as of March 20, 2020.

Also, check out 9 Tips for having the best Teams meeting experience !

If you’re new to Microsoft Teams and need to get up-to-speed quickly on how to organize and participate in a Teams meeting, this post provides 5 things to start with.

The meeting tool-of-choice in Office 365 today is Microsoft Teams – a fantastic tool to enhance the meeting experience in several ways. This post covers the basic components of Microsoft Teams to organize and participate in a Teams meeting. If you’re a Microsoft Teams newbie, these features are a great place to start!

This is a joint post with a co-worker of mine, Ali Fadavinia. Ali and I work together on a large team rolling out Office 365 capabilities, including Microsoft Teams, to an organization.

Ali’s technical background is Network and Computer Software Engineering. He enjoys working with cutting-edge technologies and implementing them across infrastructures and organizations. He works with the Office 365 suite of products such as Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business in his daily work environment.

You can reach out to Ali via LinkedIn.

This post will cover:

Let’s dive in…

Setting up a Teams Meeting

In the past, many of you have used Skype for Business (SfB) for meetings by including a virtual link to your Outlook meeting invitations. You can do the same with Microsoft Teams!

What actions should be taken to see “New Teams Meeting” in your Outlook ribbon? You will need to install the Teams Desktop client and, once installed, Outlook will automatically show the new icon on the ribbon.New Teams meeting

As was done for SfB, this will add a Teams Meeting link at the bottom of your meeting invitation body so when the time comes, meeting attendees can join with the provided link:

Meeting invitation

Once the meeting is set up, you can go in and adjust the meeting options by clicking Meeting options on the toolbar:

Meeting Option toolbar

Options in my tenant are around who can bypass the lobby and who can present: (options in your tenant may be different – I’m looking into this)

Meeting Options

Meeting with External Attendees

One of the really neat things about running a Teams meeting is anyone with an email address, both inside and outside your organisation, can take part! Here are the 3 main types of external attendees:

External Attendee 1: A user with no Microsoft Account (any email address)

Anyone with an email address and internet connection can access the call via the browser, simply by clicking the ‘Join on the web instead’ button (or dialing the dial-in number if you have that configured – refer  to External Attendee 3 option below):

This is what an external attendee will receive (this example is a gmail account):

Sample gmail meeting invitation

As the meeting organizer, you will be prompted to allow external people in from the lobby.

Lobby wait

External attendees can share their own desktop or app (this is dependent on the browser they’re using – refer to ‘Sharing content with other Attendees’ section below for more detail) making this an excellent way to have a conference call in Teams….without all attendees being in Teams!

External Attendee 2: A user with any Office 365 Account, as a Guest User

If the guests have Microsoft accounts, they can either use the web link as above or, if they click the ‘Open Microsoft Teams’ option and sign in to their Microsoft account, they can launch the Microsoft Teams client to get a richer user experience within the Teams meeting.

External Attendee 3: Anyone with a phone to dial in and join

You can also have a dial-in conference option so attendees can join the Microsoft Teams meeting from any device, anywhere. This requires Audio Conferencing which comes with an Office 365 Enterprise E5 subscription or as an add-on to Office 365 E1 or E3. Where Audio Conferencing has been enabled by an Admin, users will automatically see the dial-in options for Microsoft Teams’ meetings added to each Teams meeting invitation (blurred in image). This is a great option if you anticipate some attendees to have low band-width.

Dial-in options

Recording your Teams Meeting

Why not record your meetings in Microsoft Teams? You can record Video, Audio, and shared screen activities for your Teams meeting. The recording is automatically saved to Microsoft Stream so later you can download, manage or even share it with your organization.

What’s the benefit? You have a record of what was discussed in the meeting to review and/or share with absent attendees. Also, the recording can later be used for other business use-cases in your organization such as: new product announcements, corporate news, training demos, etc.

How do we record our meeting in Microsoft Teams? Both the meeting organizer and internal attendees can start or stop the recording. External attendees will not be able to do this.

  • Start or join the meeting
  • Click on the ellipse “…”and then select “Start Recording” as shown below:

Start Recording

As the organizer, you will be notified you’re being recorded and will be given a reminder to tell your meeting attendees they are being recorded:

Meeting recording as organizer

This is what the meeting attendees will see:

Meeting recording as attendee

To stop recording, go to the meeting controls on the ellipsis “…” and click “stop recording” from the same menu.

How do you replay a meeting in Microsoft Teams? Both the meeting organizer and all internal attendees can replay a recorded meeting.

Note: external guests CANNOT replay a recorded meeting.

To do this, you will go to either the Channel conversation history in Teams if the meeting was created in a Teams channel OR the chat history in Teams if the meeting was created outside of a Teams channel (directly from Outlook or a Group chat). Find the video recording for the meeting, and click “Play” to automatically play the meeting recording thru Microsoft Stream.

Meeting record in Stream

Further details on how to record a meeting in Teams can be found here.

Blurring your Background

If you work in a busy or open cubicle environment, this is a useful feature for meeting and video calls. Sometimes you may have confidential information on your walls, you may be on your commute, or you may be working from home or a coffee shop with lots of visual distraction in the background. The background blur feature cleverly blurs the surroundings behind you while leaving you clear and un-blurred.

To activate Background Blur for yourself during meetings, click on the ellipsis “…”on the call menu and select “Blur my background”.

Blur my background

Sharing Content with other Attendees

If you want to share any content during the meeting (your desktop, a presentation, a document, etc.), you can do this by following these steps:

Select Share:

Share desktop

You will receive a prompt to share your desktop or any of your open applications individually. The options you see depend on if you are using the Microsoft Teams client or the web app (see ‘Good to know’ section below). You can also share a Microsoft Whiteboard which is a great option for group collaboration on a virtual whiteboard. If you don’t see what you want in the options shown to you, you can browse to find your content to share. If you need to include system audio (For example, sharing a youtube video with your attendees), make sure you check the ‘Include system audio’ checkbox:

Sharing options

Note: If you have multiple monitors and you share your desktop, a red border will surround the monitor’s desktop being shared with attendees.

To stop sharing, click the Stop sharing icon:

Stop sharing

Good to know…

  • In the Teams client application, both desktop sharing and application sharing is available.
  • If you share your desktop, your entire screen will be displayed. If you share one of your open applications (e.g. PowerPoint, Word), it will be the only one displayed. The screen/application being shared will be surrounded by a red border.
  • If you join via a web browser, the sharing options available to you will vary depending on the browser being used. As of March 2020:
    • Chrome: can share desktop/window, apps, and whiteboard
    • Chromium-based Edge: can share desktop/window, apps, and whiteboard
    • Edge: can share apps and whiteboard (no desktop/window)

Ending the call

Last, but not least… to end/leave a meeting, simply click the big red button to hang up!

End the call

Extras based on feedback

Limit of 4 people shown in Teams meeting UI: As of March 2020, you will only see the active video for the last 4 people that have spoken in the chat/meeting. Increasing this is on the product roadmap for Teams. If you want to vote on the Uservoice, here’s the link: Show all people in Teams Meeting

Microsoft links to help:

What’s Next?

There’s lots more to learn about Microsoft Teams and meetings is only one part of what it does. Hopefully you found this post helpful to get you comfortable organizing and joining a Team meeting.

Thanks for reading!

Ali and JCK


  1. Great quick overview! Something I learned from experience which is a huge improvement over Skype for Business is that even if you are the organizer and owner, if you have an unexpected computer event, the meeting will continue, as will the recording, while you scramble to get back up. With SfB this would at minimum cause the recording to be lost.

  2. Hi Joanne,
    Great post — lots of good info. One question: in Sfb or webex if you share an application and then move focus off that app (on the same monitor), attendees see a grey or black image until you (as the moderator) refocus your screen on that app. Do you know if that occurs in Teams? It’s a real limitation.

  3. Thanks Joanne, great post. one the this I am struggling with is that i use the tool for interviews and need to type answers into a document whilst “meeting” the person. when i move to the work document (which I do not want them to see) I lose the video and thus need to flip back and forth between seeing them and typing answers. any advice?

  4. I’d still love to just a) How to see who attended a Teams meeting after the meeting without having to do screen captures of the attendee list at various points during the meeting b) How to do screen captures of the shared content without having the Teams status/icon bar pop up at the bottom of the image.

  5. Is there anyway that we can hide record notification to others like i have started recording?? also after finishing call it should not send in the same conversation group??

    1. Sudheer that sounds reasonably sneaky… 🙂 Most countries would have laws protecting individuals’ rights to not be recorded without their consent, at the least it is good etiquette not to record people without their permission. Teams’ design is based on this.

  6. Hi Joanne, Is there a way to send a sound effect to a MS Teams group? Also, Is there a way to create a meeting for a preset team within the team app. That is, without having to add individuals?

    1. Hi Stephen, I don’t know of a way to send a sound effect. I think you need to add at least 1 individual for a preset meeting.

      1. Hey Eric, thanks for making this clarification… i was thinking they wanted to send a wave file in a chat.

    1. Hi Azad,
      There’s no awesome solution to this at this time – you would have to export it from Stream and send it to them that way.

      1. HI Chad, the only way I know of within Microsoft Teams is to open up your calendar and select “Meet Now” on the top right-hand corner. You don’t have to invite anyone else in, but you can record in there. Would that work for you?

  7. Is there a way to record both the audio and the visual with the recording feature? When I clicked record on a recent meeting all that got recorded was the audio, and I’d like to get the visual element too.

    1. Hi Lauren,
      The recording is for both audio and video. Were you sharing your desktop/app with the attendees? This is what will be recorded.

      1. I was hoping to record the faces of the individuals calling in (similar to what Skype does when you record a conversation). Would sharing my screen still allow me to see everyone who is showing their faces in Teams and allow that conversation to be recorded?and have the conversation recorded?

        If it helps, my goal/hope is to use teams to create a video that shows people talking back and forth and engaging with each other in the windows similar to the opening of The Brady Bunch.

  8. Hello – Question regarding recording the meeting and screen share. I held a meeting this morning, began the recording and activated the screen share. When I went to review the meeting afterwards the only thing I could see was the participants, not the screen share. Am I missing a step? – Appreciate your help!

    1. Hi Jenn,
      Thanks for reaching out! You should also see the screen share in the recording. Hard for me to troubleshoot much after-the-fact… however, were you sharing an app or your desktop? Look for the red border around the thing you’re sharing. It should be recording the same thing everyone in the meeting is looking at.

      1. Hi,

        I had the same problem as Jenn Cole above. The shared screen did not show on the recording, only the participants . The issue seems to be random, a couple of people at my organisation experienced the same thing, although it worked well for some of us before.

      2. Hi Dimby and Jenn,
        Not sure what the problem could be. If you’re sharing your desktop or app and have confirmed with everyone else they’re seeing it and you have hit the ‘Start recording’ button, and then stop the recording at the end of the meeting, I’m not sure what the problem could be. If you have done all of these things and the recording doesn’t have your shared desktop/app, my best advice would be to open up a ticket with MSFT.

  9. If you only have a free account can you still start and run a meeting ? It is not clear as most posts on MS Teams assume at least one person has a paid subscription.

  10. Thanks Joanne, the MS page is open to a lot of interpretation !

    By nothing scheduled you mean I think scheduled via the MS Teams scheduling facility.

    You can of course still arrange it outside MS Teams by email, phone or whatever as one group I am involved in does. All we do is send all the members the meeting time & date & the link by email. However the person who creates the link does this from their office MS Teams account.

    I am not sure the MS Teams scheduling will work with the Linux Client in fact I have a suspicion it might ‘corrupt’ a Linux Evolution Groupware contacts file but I need to prove that.

    1. Hi John, yes i mean scheduled as a Teams meeting using built-in functionality . Sorry i can’t help you much more than this, particularly with the Linux client.

  11. Hi! Is there a way to show all participants on screen at once vs only the person who is talking? I know I can do that with Zoom but can’t seem to find this capability on Teams.

    1. Hi Judy, you can currently only show up to 4 participants at a time in Teams – this is 1 of the current differences from Zoom. There is a uservoice on this exact request.

      1. my screen only shows their circle with initials unless they are talking then they go full screen? How do I see 4 others?

      2. Hi Debbie, you should be able to see up to a maximum of 4 attendees/speakers at once. I’ve heard there are others currently experiencing this issue. I’ve seen this mostly in the Teams Web App, if you are using that try the desktop client instead. Please let’s me know if that fixes it so others can benefit by reading this thread.

      3. Hello Joanne,
        Is there a way for an attendee to see a fullscreen view of only the organiser and not the other participants?
        My son attends online classes and he sees his teacher and 3 other students. He gets distracted by the other 3. It will be great if you can help out.
        Dr. Lateef Zameer

      4. Hello,

        Pin the teacher (only)! Once you start pinning, only the pinned video(s) will show.
        Thanks to @ianmoran @modery @YannickReekmans on Twitter for providing the answer!

  12. Does the organizer have to start the meeting or even be in the meeting? Can I set up a meeting for a group and not be part of it?

  13. Hi there, thanks for this really useful post. As someone said above, I can only see the person who is speaking on screen and not the other participants (even if only three or four of us). Is there a setting so that I can see everyone in a meeting at once (up to four people)? I couldn’t find it.


  14. Hi, how do I moderate a discussion in Teams? If I work with a larger group and I ask a question, how do I know who wishes to respond and how do I “call on” that person? Thanks!

    1. Hi, the ability for an attendee to raise their hand in a Teams meeting (to help with moderation) is not currently available (March 2020) however that capability is coming.

  15. Hello Joanne Klein,
    I am setting up classroom in Teams. I was intending to add all the students as members but maybe I could just post the invite on the LMS. Would that impact the students experience? I get the impression that an external client has less functionality on Teams but I am not sure what qualifies a participant as an external client?

  16. Hi, I am unable to use whiteboard in a teams meeting. even if I share the application with other attendees, they are unable to see whiteboard. Could you please help

    1. You could also try opening up the whiteboard and either sharing it directly or sharing your desktop. Also, you can pre-share the whiteboard link to your attendees and get them to open it either from the browser(whiteboard.microsoft.com) or their own desktop app. Let me know if any of those work for you.

  17. Hi,
    We are a team of 10 using Teams every day now.
    During a call, we can only see 4 participants on our screen at any one time.
    Is there a way of showing all 10 of us – if we have our cameras on?
    This would be really helpful whilst we are all working from home.

    1. Hi Kari,
      No, this is not possible. The maximum right now is 4 – this is on the roadmap for Teams and I imagine they are working hard to roll out this change as soon as they can as a lot of teams are wanting this.

  18. Hello! We are interested in using Teams to host external webinars for our clients. We have the standards Teams platform (not Teams live). How long can we hold a meeting with the version we have? I know for Teams live it is 4 hours.

    1. Hello Shelby, sorry it took so long for my response… a non-recorded meeting can be up to 24 hours in duration. A recorded one can be 4 hours. (I can’t currently find this in official documentation but found it in a forum thread)

    1. Hi Gabriel, not that I’m aware of. It’s based on who last spoke. You can pin members but i think that’s just for each person to control.

  19. I am trying to set up a town hall type of meeting, there will be 8 people on the talking(all in the same domain), and they want the public to be able to listen to the meeting but not interact in anyway. We are concerned about security as this will be a public meeting, and we have no way of legitimizing anyone who enters the lobby. With Skype for business we were able to create a meeting and then lock down who could present and everyone else would be audio only. Has this all moved to the Teams Admin site? If so… is this something Microsoft is planning on having the admins have to configure for each client any time they want to have a meeting with limitations?

    1. Hi Morgan, this sounds like a great use-case for a Teams live event. You can certainly configure default options at the Admin level for events like this, but once a user has been granted the ability to create a Teams Live event, they can set it up themselves from within the Teams client. (with training of course as they are quite a bit more involved than a regular Teams meeting: producer, presenter, moderator, etc.) Typically a public-facing town-hall style meeting like this has some oversight from IT or Communications to help with the delivery. I’m working with an org that has delivered several of these and the business teams will certainly soon be able to deliver on their own.

  20. Great rundown Joanne, thank you. We recorded a meeting with host plus three internal people, but when we played back the recording only the host video was showing? The other three showed as generic placeholder heads… do you know what we may have done to cause that?

    Thanks again.

    1. Hi lunchwithangel,
      I’m not sure what you mean “the other three showed as generic placeholder heads”… what was being shared with you started the recording? This is pretty hard to troubleshoot after-the-fact and without seeing what you’re seeing. I’m afraid I won’t be able to assist much.

  21. Hi Joanne. I have my HP elitebook laptop linked up to my HP elitedisplay monitor (which has built-in speakers and webcam). When I join Teams meetings, the sound comes out of my Monitor, but Teams is still using the webcam in my laptop. Any idea how I get Teams to use my monitor webcam, rather than my laptop webcam?

    1. Hi Phil, you need to adjust your device settings. Click on your picture icon on the top right-hand corner… Settings… Devices… and adjust/test.

  22. First time using TEam, someone booked a meeting and was in my calender so when the time came and reminder? Popped up and i ignore it because i was busy . A few days later I saw the chat section of the meeting and it said that i joined the meeting so not sure if i accidentally pressed join in but i didn’t remember having a black screen or call screen, and i clicked a button that left with a message which said i left the meeting in the chat section. So i had my earplugs plug in my laptop, so not sure if they hear anything. Just wondering how it happen and how much did they hear becsuse i didnt know ehat the audio default were at that time.

    1. Hi Lily, this is very difficult to troubleshoot at a distance and after-the-fact. I think I know what happened… the person scheduling the meeting likely did so from a Group chat (automatically includes everyone in the Group chat on the meeting invitation). If the meeting is started, whether or not you actually join the meeting, the chat window says you joined it. I don’t believe this is the case if it’s a regular Teams meeting scheduled outside of a Group chat. Also, make sure you are familiar with the audio/video settings for your Teams and do a test call before you have to join a meeting.

  23. We were going to move from Webex to Teams, but the limitation of sharing windows has put us off of this. We need to be able to go from one window to the next without “stop sharing” each time. We haven’t found a way to do this in teams, so when our presenter has three excel spreadsheets she needs to share, she shares the first then in order to go to the next window she has to stop sharing and restart. That’s a horrible limitation. You should be able to toggle through the windows.

    1. Hi Pat,
      Make sure the person doing the sharing shares their ‘Desktop’ and not the separate app (the Excel app in your example above). If you do this, everyone will see your desktop and you can flip between any apps you want without stopping the share. Hope this helps.

    2. Pat – you can. Don’t share the individual spreadsheet, instead, share your desktop and toggle through the spreadsheets using ALT-TAB, Holding down the ALT, TAB through to the next document.

  24. Hi Joanne, do you know if there is shared content during a meeting and another participant is editing a document for the host where that document saves and is updated after the meeting is concluded?



    1. Hi Bridget, not sure I know what you’re asking, however whether you are sharing a document in the meeting or not, it is still open for co-authoring – in fact their can be multiple people co-editing a document being shared in a Teams meeting. Did this answer your question?

  25. Good afternoon. We used teams last night for a video conference call with mixed internal and external participants. We did not have a call in number. During the call several people were connected into a separate meeting even though they were invited to the same meeting. Could you help us determine what we did wrong so this works seamlessly next time.

    1. Hi Rolland, without being there this is pretty hard for me to troubleshoot “from afar”… however all of the attendees need to ensure they’re joining the meeting with the same email address you sent the meeting invitation to. Do you have the meeting options configured to automatically join or do you require attendees to wait in the lobby? I’m not saying this was the issue, but I’m just trying to throw ideas out there. 2 other suggestions: set up a “test” meeting and try some things out with a friend that has an external address. Also, do you have a Microsoft support # you can call? They may also be able to help you.

  26. Good article! Is there a way to keep track of the attendees who have joined a meeting after the call is completed?

  27. Hi,

    Thanks for the article. I’ve been asked to join a Micosoft Teams meeting (never used before) but my only source of internet access is a desktop with no microphone or webcam. Can I still join the meeting and watch as a “silent partner” of sorts?

  28. Thank you for the info. I have been a guest at a number of meetings where the shared document seems to get locked up when the organizer is trying to make notes and updates during the meeting. Is this a known bug or is there something that the presenter is doing incorrectly?

    1. Hi Jay,
      I’m not aware of any bug. How are they sharing the document? Are they sharing their desktop and then selecting the word program or are they picking the word application and sharing it that way? Not sure it makes a difference though… also, who is co-authoring on the document? External guests? There are several things that could be going on and someone closer to the meeting (than me) would need to troubleshoot “in the moment”.
      Long story short… I’m not aware of a bug.

  29. So how can you tell if your video is being shown in the feed? Only the last four are on screen in a conference call of, say, 20 people. But sometimes, someone will get video attention just because their chair makes a sound or they click a button – they don’t necessarily need to say anything to get attention. So if that happens to me, how can I tell if my video indata is being shown to the others, or whether I am not being filmed.

  30. Hello, if i make a video call meeting using my mobile phone, can i screen share my pc desktop which donthave camera on my pc. can i do that?

  31. Thank you for this. The one piece I continue to have difficulty with is the Chat export. Do attendees automatically get emailed, can I export/share it?

    1. Hi Ray,
      Attendees do not automatically get emailed a chat export. If it’s a “Meet Now” in a chat, it will be stored in your Mailbox, if it’s a Channel meeting, the meeting chat will be stored in the Group mailbox. You would need to use Content Search to get the chat – the chats are stored as individual .eml files. That’s the high-level answer- it’s basically not built-in capability within Microsoft Teams.

  32. HI Joanne – Is there a way for the presenter to NOT ALLOW external guests from being seen on the meeting screen? Much in the way of presenting a webinar to a variety of guests from different entities verses a “group meeting” or “discussion”. Also, in the same way, can the presenter control who’s allowed to participate (other than the initial link being provided to the external guest)? In other words, we are trying to limit or control who participates from the external community (some external guests may forward the link to others that were not invited by the presenter originally). Thank you.

    1. Hi DCR, to your first question, this sounds like a Teams Live meeting to me (as opposed to a ‘Meet Now’ or a Teams meeting). In that type of meeting, only the presenters, producers, and moderators would be seen/involved from the back-end. To your second question… is this a private or a pubic meeting? If it’s public, anyone with the link will be able to join without logging in. If it’s private, you can restrict it to groups and users (including guest users) in your tenant. Hope this helped.

  33. Dear Joanne, may I know why I am using apple headphone with microphone, but computer show they did not find any mic on me and others can hear me? please advise

    1. Hi Wong Soh Har,
      This sounds like a device issue – sorry I’m unable to troubleshoot this type of thing. Please use the settings within Teams to test your audio/video settings. If it doesn’t see your devices, then look to your machine settings. Perhaps the issue is outside of Teams.

  34. Hi Joanne, thanks for all the good info!
    Q: I am running two mail accounts on Outlook; from the one I can set up a Teams meeting, no problem; but from the other one I cannot: the system comes back saying: ‘cannot connect to the server right now, plse try later’. By switching back to the first account, using the same Teams meeting set up function from the calendar, all is OK (except the meeting ends up in the corresponding calendar, which is less than ideal).
    This was not so until around november last year; until then all worked OK from either account. The problem kicked in sometime in November; I tried many things – to no avail.
    Would you have a suggestion what to do?
    Okko Bleeker (NL)

    1. Hi OFB, I’m sorry this is something I won’t be able to assist you with. Have you tried opening a ticket with Microsoft?

      1. Thx Joanne, yes I did file a ticket with MS, but it could not be resolved

  35. Hi Joanne. Thank you for your article. I am a teacher new to using teams. I have created a team and added my students. I have also scheduled a meeting for the future. I know they have all received an email invitation with the link to join the meeting. My question is when does that link become active? Is it possible for them to enter a meeting before me (not desirable) or do they have to wait for me? Also, is it possible to control participants’ video/audio? Can i force mute them, for example? Is it possible to remove a participant from a meeting? And finally, if I end the meeting, does it end it for everyone?

    Sorry to bombard you, but I found Microsoft’s help pages lacking. Many thanks!

    1. Hi Nathan, I’ll try to help you out with some of these questions…
      There are some settings done at your tenant level that may affect the options you see and the default meetings settings. Without knowing what those are, I’ll provide some posts that show the options available although your experience may be slightly different due to this. Please view this video for a few settings you should know about, particularly as a teacher: https://regarding365.com/how-to-stop-teams-bombing-61c5beed8b27

      It talks about:
      – prevent attendees from muting each other
      – prevent attendees from kicking others out
      – control screen sharing for all attendees

      You can configure the meeting options so the attendees will have to wait in the virtual lobby until you let them in. This is a tenant level setting however you can override it: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/change-participant-settings-for-a-teams-meeting-53261366-dbd5-45f9-aae9-a70e6354f88e

      If you end the meeting, it’s over for everyone however I *think* they can continue to chat for a period of time in the meeting chat however you will be able to see that. Haven’t tested this.

      Hope this was helpful. 🙂

  36. Hi

    Thanks for this, very helpful. Is there a time limit on how long the links to the recordings will remain active?

    Looking at recording a training session that we will had to our wiki page but wondering if it will expire at some point?

    1. Hi Cath,
      It won’t expire – the recordings are stored in Microsoft Stream and unless someone goes in and deletes the video, it will remain.

  37. Hi, thanks for the tips! I’ve been using Teams with my company for a while. QQ, do you know how long meeting recordings are kept in the Meeting Chat? Thanks.

    1. Hi Lia,
      Assuming you do not have a retention policy on your Teams chats, as far as I know you will see the meeting recording forever. It is stored in Microsoft Stream behind the scenes.

  38. Hi, is it possible to schedule Microsoft Teams meeting for a group of people without having to participate in the meeting?

    1. Hi Stephanie, you can organize a meeting and as long as you don’t have the option where attendees must be let in from the lobby, the meeting can happen without the organizer joining. They can even record the meeting if required.

  39. HI Joanne
    my organisation has subscribed to Teams and we will be using it for virtual fostering panel meetings. My question for yois relates to whether it is possible to ensure that of the 4 persons maximum on the screen, that one or two of them can remain on screen at all times, regardless of whether they speak or not? We will require foster carers to be seen on screen at all times by all other panel members live on Teams. Can you advise?

    1. Hi Mo, I’m not aware of a way to currently do this. It’s based on the last 4 that spoke.

  40. Hi Joanne, thanks for the really helpful info. Question: how do i export an meeting attendance list from MS Teams?

  41. Hi Jo, is there a way to host / organize 2-3 Teams meeting at the same time? The context being I am looking at doing a project kick-off session with a larger group (incl external guests), post which simultaneous break-outs of smaller teams on MS Teams. I was wondering if there’s a way I could possibly organize all of these from my calendar. Being the organiser, do I have to sit through all of them (I don’t necessarily have to, for the breakouts), but is it safe to assume that the meeting wont start without the organiser being present?

    1. Hi jj,
      By all means you can do this!! The meeting can start without the organizer joining. Make sure you don’t have the Lobby feature turned on for your participants and allow them to automatically enter (controlled by a Meeting Policy in the Teams Admin Center). A participant can also start the recording without the organizer being there if this is something you’ll want to do. My recommendation is to assign an “owner” of the meeting even if you won’t be there.
      My recommendation? Set up some test meetings in advance to work out the kinks and get all your questions answered! 🙂

  42. Hi, I want to know if there is any option to stop recording. During the meeting participants can start recording but I don’t want any one to record the session. Rather pressing suspend all the time is there is option to banned recording for the session.

    1. Hi Mohammad,
      The ability to turn off the recording option completely is set by a Meeting Policy in the Teams Admin Center. This can be set for the entire tenant or for select users.

  43. Hi..
    I am Vishnu I am a student
    I am getting a problem that everyone has the access to kick out anyone from the teams
    so I want the solution of this problem so that no one can kick out and everyone can study in teams properly without creating any indiscipline.

    1. Hi Vishnu,
      It sounds like everyone in your Team is an Owner which would allow them to remove anyone else from the Team. THere should only be a select few identified as an Owner and everyone else should be a member. There are many settings an Owner can define for members in a Team (whether they can create/delete channels, add tabs, edit their own messages, etc)

  44. Hi there – does Microsoft teams automatically store your video calls or do you have press record at the start of each meeting? Thanks

    1. Hi, as of April 2020… in a Microsoft Teams meeting you have to remember to start the recording.

  45. Can i use Snapchat or any other app during the meeting is going on the Microsoft Teams ? Will the organizer know about or Participants i the meeting?

  46. Hi Joanne -Great advice as always. If you add a document in a teams meeting invite, where is the document stored? OneDrive or SharePoint? Is it subjected to any of the Teams retention policies. If so, Chat? Thanks!

      1. I don’t see an option to add an attachment; i.e. document to the meeting invite. Did I miss it? Where does the file get stored if is shared a document via a meeting chat?

      2. If you share a document in a Teams meeting chat it will be stored in a special folder in your OneDrive called “Microsoft Teams Chat Files”

  47. I work at a school. We adopted O365 last summer (2019) and are using Teams extensively for class meetings. I’m trying to search for the audio history of a Teams meeting where a middle schooler kept playing inappropriate audio and interrupted the class. Any help would be useful. I have access to the Teams Admin console and am a Global Admin as well. Thanks!

    1. Hi Sue, did you record the meeting? If not, what’s in the chat history for the meeting? Anything in there helpful? Unless you’ve got a retention policy in place to delete, it should still be there.

      1. Hi Joanne,
        The session was recorded and in the end, the teacher was able to figure out what was happening (student was logged in twice on separate devices with separate profile photos, as can happen with the installed version of Teams). I was just asking where one could find a log of who was speaking. The software has to know, since it constantly brings forward the speaker. In this case, they were watching the teacher’s Powerpoint, so it wasn’t as obvious. If you know a place to find such a log, I’d love to know where!

        Overall, Teams has been working really well for us with elementary & middle school agers. I just have to keep reeling in certain privileges depending upon the age group.

        Thanks for any help you can offer with finding the log for speech (not chat)!


      2. Hi Sue, the speech transcript shows when you view the recording in Microsoft Stream so that is where it’s stored (Azure Media Services). I know you can search in there, not sure if you can export it, never tried. Does that help?

  48. Hi Joanne

    Would you be able to let me know how I can send out one invite to multiple recipients via separate meeting invites – I am holding several board meetings and there will be different attendees throughout the day and therefore separate invites. Any guidance would be great.


  49. Halo Joanne

    I’m New on Microsoft teams and I do not know how to accept an invite. Could someone kindly assist me

  50. Hi Joanne

    Thank you this is all very useful information

    1. I used Teams yesterday for my first virtual class.
    At the begining of the class I could see and hear the participant with her laptop.
    She connected her laptop via HDI cable to to smart TV, then Iost her image. She was still able to see me, see my PPP and hear me but I could not see her. Any ideas?

    2. Is ther any other way to play an embeded video from youtube that is part of a PPP besides sharing it via desktop and viewing the PPP in the edit mode? I know I need to share the audio when I do screen share. I have looked on line for the answer; this is the only way that I am able to share a PPP and have control of the video at the same tiem.

    3. I did a trial run with 2 other laptops. I shared my desktop to veiw the PPP one laptop had a very crisp view of the PP the other laptop view was very blurry. Any idea why and how to fix?

    4. Is there a pointer available to use during a PPP?

    Thank you for all of your help. You are awesome!

  51. I am supposed to be a presenter in a live meeting. The invite says presenter. I am an external invitee. However, I only connect as an attendee. I can see them but they cannot see or hear me. HELP!

    1. Hi Joan, they should have given you a special presenter link. It’s different than the attendee link.

  52. Can an external attendee share a document on screen to the rest of the attendees? For instance, I want to hold a sales meeting with both internal and external attendees. Some of the external attendees will give a 5 or 10 minute presentation that might include a PPT or other documents… will they be able to act as a presenter to share these documents to the group? Or will I need to share those documents on my end (as the organizer) as they speak to the group?

      1. As an attendee or do I need to create a “presenter” link for them? Thank you for your help!

  53. Hi.
    If you forget to exit a video call using the red button, but close the app, a call seems to continue (small icon on mobile phone home screen). Is the microphone and / or camera still active?

  54. Great Post. I need to schedule meetings for the same external participants multiple times (at different timings). Is there a way to do this without me creating and adding the participants every time?

  55. Hi, I was invited to a Microsoft Teams video call which I joined as an external participant. Call ended after 15 minutes and I proceeded to make a WhatsApp call. Once I ended this call I noticed a call screen that had Microsoft Teams Audio call on it (not seen it before) and it looked as though I was dialled into a call (about the same length of time had passed since my Microsoft Teams call started). I pressed the end call button and then the screen disappeared. Is this just a blip. Wouldn’t the WhatsApp call override the Teams call? Could any WhatsApp audio be heard on the Teams call that seemed to still be running?

  56. Hi,
    I’m trying to understand why sometimes meeting attendees who are late to the meeting can view the contents in the chat window that were posted BEFORE they arrived. Other times, those late arrivers cannot see the chat posts. Why is that? does it have something to do with whether they are optional attendees for the meeting?

  57. hi
    if as the host of a meeting i am unable to attend due to sickness or travel problems that day , will the meeting still be able to go ahead ?

  58. Hi Joanne, thanks for the great explanation very helpful.
    I have the following Problem. In the Meetings I hold with Teams sometimes several people (internal and external) just dial in with their regular phones. As a moderator I see on the side the participants and who is talking. Unfortunately when the people dial in with their phone I just see a number and not a name.
    So I was wondering if there is any chance to change a number to a name? Do you have a solution for that? Thanks in advance and Regards Verena

  59. My company is holding a remote meeting with internal and external users. Some of the external users are new to teams and new to remote meetings in general. If they’re not comfortable with the technology to share a document, can I share it from my screen for them as they narrate? Or will that not work?

  60. Hi Jo,

    I had forgotten to leave a Microsoft team meeting with one other person. It was a video meeting and I attended by clicking a link in outlook from my calendar which states join Microsoft teams meeting. I somehow ended the video call but didn’t realise I was still in the meeting as a notification came up telling me.

    I’m panicking that it may have been recording after the other individual left.

  61. Hi Joanne,

    I have added participant to the ongoing call from our team and he started recording our call, I removed him after I got clarifications from the participant. I have continued the same call with others on different points but later realized call is getting recorded and full recording was shared in the group after the call is over. Now the question – Is this full recording available to the participants joined and dropped in between the call, Or only part of it is available for them for the time they are in the call. Please clarify. Thanks in advance

  62. can I host two separate meetings on teams at the same time? I set up meetings for other people and they are usually at the same time, but different groups.

  63. Is there a way when hosting a Stream event to hide the participants on the screen from others, it is distracting when showing a slide presentation

  64. Just had my first Teams group meeting. A bit disappointing. Only 4 people can be seen? It’s on the list? It should be there. Background noise seemed to be picked up which was distracting. On the other hand the sound was patchy. We have been using Zoom, even WEbex without these hindrances. Such a shame to have not got this right. While we have Teams as part of our 365, we are now going to shell out extra for a Zoom account because it is so much better and easier.

    1. Hi Colin,
      I have 9 people visible on my tenant. I believe it’s rolling out worldwide right now.

      1. I should have clarified. I was using my phone. On Zoom you can scroll through all participants, another option is to see just the speaker. Overall more user friendly. I cannot believe MS had not properly researched what users need and want. Too late to catch up and capture the market.

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